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Lost Bartlesville: In Our Little (Snowy) Corner of the World …

Lost Bartlesville: In Our Little (Snowy) Corner of the World …

Lost Bartlesville: In Our Little (Snowy) Corner of the World …

Rita Thurman Barnes, who has always had a love for words, writes about her beloved Bartlesville reflections as well as other topics from the heart in books as well as in a column for the Examiner-Enterprise for more than 10 years.

Are you at home just about anywhere? Or do you prefer your own little corner of the world?

Well, anyone who knows me knows hubby and I have had a propensity towards changing houses in our 45 plus years of marriage but it isn’t because I don’t feel at home wherever we happen to be living. I’ve just always loved Bartlesville and I do happen to feel at home wherever I hang my hat.

The first photo with this week’s story was taken on the morning of Sunday, January 5th of this brand new year when hubby and I were on our way home from church. Our friend Fred rides with us to church and back and we were taking him home when I snapped what I think is a pretty nice photo of the corner near where Fred lives. The roads were slick and snow-packed and the sidewalk and steps leading to Fred’s house were barely discernible and everything sparkled in the sun. It was a sight to behold!

Fred uses a cane for balance so hubby got out to make sure he didn’t create any accidental snow angels in his own front yard and that left me sitting in the car with my trusty iPhone camera. When I turned around and looked to the south I was reminded of the words from the Christmas poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” by Clement Moore in which he says “the moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a luster of midday to objects below”. The only problem was the sun was almost straight up noon on this beautiful winter’s day.

If you live nearby you might have some idea of where I took my snowy photo but more than likely most of you haven’t a clue. The first native Bartian I showed the picture to told me they knew exactly what the location was and of course they were completely wrong. Snow has a way of doing funny things like disorienting people to their landscape and I was tickled just a little bit to tell my friend that he needed to guess again.

A lot of the discussion during our most recent snowed-in time in Bartlesville has centered about the big snow storm of ‘09 or the big one back in the late 1960’s or the one that left grandma and grandpa without power for over a week. But I have a few in particular that stand out in my own mind.

When we lived out in Osage County for 15 years we were busy raising our two sons and mowing a lot of grass. But we also enjoyed planting flowers and cajoling Gold Finches to our multitude of finch feeders. However one of the most concrete memories that comes up with our little nuclear family on days when we sit by a fire and remember the way things used to be is the Christmas snow storm when a good bit of the town was literally frozen stiff.

We had no power for five days and we sat around the fireplace wearing baseball caps and zipped up in sleeping bags under which we were fully clothed. It was so cold and there was so much snow that the cats sat on the hearth of the fireplace refusing to go outside at all and we put our food in the garage where it was much colder than in our refrigerator.

My sister had come out to spend Christmas day with us and ended up snowed in and staying five days and nights instead. We thought we were going to live like that for the rest of our lives when all of a sudden the electricity came back on and every light in the house lit up. What a surprise and a delight that was.

Everyone has their own Bartlesville snow memories and young people all around us are creating snow memories of their own. When we were driving eastward just south of Walmart this week we saw a young father who was out enjoying the snow days with his own children and a few extras by sliding down the berm that made a perfect hill for sledding. They won’t soon forget that day out of school.

Much of the heartland is still under the grip of one of the coldest and snowiest winters in recent history as I sit typing by yet another warm and cozy fireside. My good friend in Missouri has a daughter who lives in Southern California. She and her husband made it home for the holidays driving under the grip of an ice storm that stopped them in their tracks down in Yukon, OK as they made their way home for Christmas.

I talked to my friend again recently and as her kids headed out for their return trip westward it took them four hours to make it from the Joplin area just to Tulsa. And as of this writing they were snowed in somewhere in Arizona having only been able to drive a very slow 30 mph. The weather is a bit freaky this year just about everywhere and one of my high school classmates told me on Facebook that it was warmer in Anchorage, Alaska where he lives than it was here in his old hometown. That’s something to write home about.

The second photo with my story this week was taken just as we turned a corner a few blocks from Fred’s house on a majorly traveled street and the snow had not fared as well on this snowy Sunday morn. I still had my iPhone and as I waiting for the traffic to clear on the cusp of a small hill I snapped this second photo.

The sun was shining brightly and right into my camera lens so the resulting photo had a little too much glare. I used my computer photo editor and converted this picture to grayscale and discovered in the process that I liked it much better. Part of what you see is the ice on the car’s windshield and the rest is the deposit left behind by the hee and yaw of the windshield wipers. Have any idea where this one was taken?

I have an old photo of folks ice skating on the Caney River. Don’t know that we’ll ever see that again but I have a memory of my Uncle Ray taking my cousins and me just below the dam on Hulah Lake over 50 years ago and letting us slide down the side of the embankment until our cardboard sleds were worn to a frazzle and then we all went home. I don’t think he could get away with that these days either. But, oh, what fun it was.

And then of course even if you never personally slid or sledded down “Shawnee Hill” I imagine you’ve fibbed about it just to join in the reverie that the mere mention of the words could invoke back in those good old days. Just about everyone lived within walking distance of the infamous incline and we prayed for snow on a weekend because they seldom ever dismissed school back then even if it was knee high or higher.

Just about everyone has their favorite “snow memories” of Bartlesville and I imagine we could swap stories all the day long. But, my very favorite one is when I was in 7th grade at Central Junior High and just about everyone walked to school come the proverbial hell or high water.

This particular day was cold and overcast and Bartlesville had awakened to about a foot of snow. My mom got out my rubber galoshes, my heavy hooded coat and my gloves and bid me a fond adieu as I headed up 10th Street towards Johnstone. It was just about as I was crossing Keeler that it happened. I dropped a Central Junior High library book into the depth of all that whiteness and try as I might I could not recover it.

I used to remember the name of the book because it was written indelibly on my mind. I found it some weeks later when that huge snowfall finally melted and it was a little worse for the wear. I turned it in to the library and amazingly enough I didn’t have to reimburse the school since the kind librarian seemed to believe my very plausible story and I sighed a huge sigh of relief.

So, do you think you know where my pictures were taken? The first was just off Frank Phillips to the north not too far past where the Pennington Hills addition begins. The second was just south of the Homeland Store on Madison by a couple of blocks.

You didn’t really think I’d tell you exactly where I took the photos, did you? Go make some snow memories of your own. It’s never too late to have fun. And I just like to keep you guessing sometimes.

Oh, by the way. I haven’t moved in almost three years but don’t hold your breath.

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